One of the all-time great apps is TuneinRadio[1], which allows you to pretty much listen to any radio station in the world, not to mention thousands of other specialty stations. Know what I’ve gotten into listening to a lot lately? Old-time radio mysteries. Try it, you’ll like it.

But I also listen to a fair amount of sports talk radio. Not from this country, though, as there is never any sports radio talk in the U.S. about hockey. But in Canada there is, and generally the best stations to for live hockey talk there are TSN 690 from Montreal and 590 The Fan from Toronto. To those I’ve excluded, apologies, but you’ll get over it.

Anyway, the Montreal station today had an interesting guest appearance from hockey analyst Pierre McGuire. Yeah, Pierre is a little excitable at times, but he is a tremendous guy and knows more about hockey in his left index finger than I do in my entire brain.

So my ears always pipe up when he’s asked about what’s going on in the game. When he came on today, I hit the “record” button on the TuneInRadio app (yes, that’s a cool feature about it) and will transcribe some of it for you good citizens here.

First, his opinion on how things stand in the lockout: The questioner, Mitch Melnick, asked if the current proposal[2] by the NHL is a framework to get something done within the next 7-10 days: “I do believe that, and I’ll tell you why: Usually when Gary Bettman says this is our last, best offer, he says that publicly. He did that the last time. Unless something’s changed in the last four hours, you’ve never heard him say this is a last, best offer. Once he says that, he’s not messing around. But right now, he’s opened up the ability for both sides to negotiate off this original document. I truly believe that you can get something done off this document. Talking to players last night, talking to management people this morning, I truly believe they can get something done off this document.”

McGuire was then asked about the new revenue sharing proposal by the league, in which the top 10 teams do the bulk of funding the bottom teams up to $200 million:

“I will tell you this: based on the end of last season’s numbers, I know that 17 of 30 teams were in the black. So there were 13 teams in the red. I know that. So, I don’t know how they came up with the ten, but there are 10 that can afford to do that. I would say there are seven that can afford to do a little bit, but not much.”

McGuire did criticize the fact that the Phoenix Coyotes are still in the NHL, which is a drag on revenues: “I’ve told you this a million times – that team shouldn’t be there. The building was built in the wrong place. That team should have been moved.”

Melnick brought up a story that was breaking on the Hockey News’ website, saying Quebec and suburban Toronto would be awarded expansion teams when the lockout is over.McGuire said, “I’ve told you this a long time, my friend, and I’m not backing off: this league is expanding. It’s gonna expand and Quebec’s gonna be a landing spot, and I would say Seattle’s got the potential to be a landing spot and I truly believe north of the 401 in Markham Ontario could be a landing spot, and it would not surprise me at all to see expansion. In order for people to see how owners are going to grow revenues for themselves, part of it’s going to be through expansion, and it’s going to cost between $280-$300 million to get an expansion team, I truly believe that.”

I believe the expansion card the league may be ready to play is why they are not playing total hardball in the CBA talks right now. Yeah, the owners and Bettman were total bullies and foolish at the start of the talks, but that’s just how Bettman rolls in the beginning. We all know that. But now they are at the 50-percent mark, from years 1-6. I’m not going to get into the rest of the minutiae from there, because there are differences of opinion as to what 50 percent really means, in terms of the dreaded HRR number.

But if owners know they have $600 million coming in from expansion – none of which goes to players – then that makes them less likely to go to war over 2 or 3 percent. Can the players get a couple more percent out of Bettman, especially in Year 1 of a deal? Maybe.

But the fact that the crux of the proposal is now 50/50 makes it a fair offer in my book. None of the previous league offers were all that “fair”, which is why they were heaped with much scorn from everyone, including me.

50/50 is a number everyone can easily understand. It’s equal. Nobody is going to cry for the players anymore now that they can get at least a 50/50 deal.

The heat is now on the players to do something. They’re expected to make a counter-proposal tomorrow. They can’t just be the party of no anymore. They’re at 50/50 now, and everybody knows they’re not going to get much more than that. If they want to drag things out and/or blow up a full season over not getting up to four more percent (their last offer was 54.3) on that first year, then they will all flunk Math 101. You really want to cost a much greater percentage of the income you could have had guaranteed over a fight of 2, 3 percent? Dumb.

Plus, if the players agree to a quick deal and get an 82-game season, the pot of hockey-related revenues will be as big as possible for them to get their cut. If they drag it out and we get 40, 50, 60 games, then they get a lot less money this year.

We all knew Bettman would get back up to 50. Yeah, he should have just done this right away maybe. We’ve all wasted over a month of hockey so far with his low ball first offer that everybody knew would come up. It was silly and it ticked the players off greatly, and they’re still cynical and wary of him and the league.

But they can’t win the PR war anymore. They have to admit that the offer now is 50/50 over six years (yes, I know there are some who say the final four years are not guaranteed to be 50, but I’ll let the pointy-headed math guys figure that out). Its says 50/50 on the offer sheet, so for our purposes here it stands.

Plus, the league took the threat of no arbitration off the table. They came down two years, to 28, for unrestricted free agency. They say they have a deferment plan to guaranteed all, full payments on contracts for this coming year.

As much as I and others dumped all over the league for the first month of the lockout, the facts show that the league has come off many of their original demands. I’d be shocked if a season is fully wiped out, but what nobody seems to know right now is how the cagey Fehr will proceed with his next move.

One former NHL player also on 690 today, Chris Nilan, said the league’s new offer “sounds fair. I think the players shouldn’t try to drag this out, because then they’ll get a worse and worse deal maybe.”

Anyway, this was more than I wanted to write on the topic tonight. It’s getting late and a good new oldies mystery is coming on.